Monday September 21st

A Lament


Summer feels like a gypsy
vagabond erasing the spring
with empty thorns, quivering
like Medusa with a thousand eyes,
her stone leaves like absent
syllables making knots
and tormenting we the travelers.

I feel forced to understand
the silent gestures of her language,
her shadowy disposition that funnels
my thoughts to her lips,
touching albeit briefly
the nectar of her eyes.

I await patiently like a drunk forest
her ivy caresses that cling and climb
melancholic, the way she
dusts everything with perfume
like a downpour of swans.

She parades in like a lightning bolt
nomadic and drifting like a
solemn wind, dancing on ancient
myths as if she had not a care
in the world.

Summer feels like a necklace of
pebbles galloping,
like a vertical Pegasus stammering,
like a shoeless God trembling,
and yet in a whisk she can
blanket the earth with a blanket of
golden myrrh.

I linger in the fragrance of her rose
awakened by the brow of her nocturnal
daylight, and when I think I know her secret,
she extends her talons and penetrates my twilight.

Summer is eternal, mineral and suggestive,
she is doves and amethyst smiles,
she is a solo violin, amber and refusing to be held,
she has wings of tourmaline feathers.

Summer my lamented crown of shimmering
words, lost in a solitary sea of white.

Kevin Harling.